Haunted
by Avery1
Summary: Illya undertakes a journey into his past, and is surprised by what he finds.


Author's Note: This story resolves several themes I introduced in an earlier story, "Once Upon A Time." If you're interested, you can find it here. I don't own these characters, don't get anything from writing about them except pleasure, which is more than sufficient compensation.

**HAUNTED**

**by**

**Avery**

It was a chill night for October, misty and moonless, a watercolor wash of a night, stripped of definable edges. Shapes blended into one another, rocks and roots disappearing into the thick mist rising from the forest floor. Illya wished he had thought to bring a bottle of vodka along, to ward off the chill. And to ward off other things, as well.

_A fool's errand, _he mentally chastised himself. _That's what this is._

To his credit, Napoleon had not laughed when Illya told him where he was going, and why. "I understand," he had replied quietly, his warm brown eyes seeing far more than Illya had intended to show. "I'll wait for you in Helsinki."

He did not deserve such a friend.

For four days now, he had traversed the rugged countryside, following the course of the Dnieper from Molodechno to Bobruysk and beyond. He kept to the back roads in order to avoid detection by the authorities, who would surely frown at his unsanctioned presence in their country. It would not do to be detained now, so close to his goal.

The forest in which he found himself was old, very old, mighty oaks and hornbeams that already were tall when the last Tsar fell. Mushrooms grew abundantly in the rich, black soil, and moss carpeted the granite boulders strewn randomly about the forest floor, detritus deposited by the retreating glaciers, eons ago. There was a patient inevitability to the place, a stoic acceptance of life's ebb and flow that Illya found familiar. _We grow. We bear fruit. We fall. Such is the way of things, _the trees seemed to say. He wrapped himself in the silence, surrendered to it, and felt his breath suspend for an instant.

A shooting star blazed by, part of the Orionid Meteor Shower, visible for a moment through the bare branches. He ignored it, although in some darkened corner of his mind he recalled that shooting stars were considered bad omens among his gypsy brethren. There would be hundreds of shooting stars tonight. He pushed the thought away.

He walked on, another mile. Two. Oaks and hornbeams gave way to spruce and aspen as the forest reclaimed old territory. The breeze picked up, carrying with it the faint aroma of tobacco. Illya flicked off his flashlight and dropped into a half-crouch, scanning the trees for the source.

"Who is there?" he challenged. _"Kto vy?"_

His voice echoed in the silent forest.

Drawing his weapon, he paced a score of yards in each direction, ruffling the ground cover with his foot, and peering into the unremitting darkness. He saw nothing, and yet the smell of tobacco lingered.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Illya murmured. His eyes were like chips of blue ice. He waited.

Nothing.

The aroma was familiar somehow; Illya inhaled, trying to place the scent. Not the awful Turkish stuff Waverly smoked, but a sweeter, simpler blend. Homegrown, he guessed. Farmers in this part of the world often cured their own tobacco for personal consumption, and were intensely proud of their creations.

The smell faded.

He walked on, every sense alert. He could see the edge of the forest now, the boundary where the trees thinned out, replaced in his memory by acres of rolling pastureland and fields of waving grain. He slowed and, after a thorough inspection of his surroundings, moved cautiously into the open, leaving the sheltering forest behind. The hoar-frosted grass crunched underfoot, announcing his presence. Any attempt at stealth would be useless here.

The fields he recalled so well were barren now, the pastures empty. Although he had known it might be thus after two decades, the sight still managed to shock him. This had been fertile land, part of a working farm collective. Now, with the discovery of huge deposits of coal and potash beneath Ukrainian soil, the land was being rededicated to industry, farmers drafted to work in the factories that had sprung up where tall sheaves of golden wheat once grew. The old ways were dying. This collective had been one of the last working farms in the area and now it, too, was being phased out, the homes and outbuildings razed to make way for a new coal processing plant.

He trotted across the meadow, and slipped easily through the open, hanging gate. He kept to the shadows, even though it was not necessary to do so, could not possibly matter now.

The hut was abandoned; he felt its emptiness taunt him as he approached. Weeds sprouted knee-high along the stone path, and laid claim to what was left of the foundation. He pulled half-heartedly at a few stalks, but they refused to yield. He sighed, and moved on.

The tiny hut had been whitewashed, once upon a time. Now, stripped of even the memory of paint, it had a tragic, neglected air. The roof had long-since crumbled; he could hear the click-click of a colony of bats nesting in its remains. On the windowsill, a rusted flatiron sat beside a collection of chipped ceramic pitchers that had once held wildflowers.

Illya wiped his brow. _"Zdes'ya,"_ he whispered. "I am here." He drew a deep breath and stepped across the threshold.

Home.

For an instant, it was exactly as he remembered it, warm and bright and alive. It was a memory of a memory, a child's rosy recollection. The charred hearth where Mama had boiled potatoes and beets to make soup. The trestle table beside the fireplace where they had eaten, and laughed, and where Illya had studied in the evenings because the light was better. The pallet in the corner where he slept, huddled under the blankets with his brothers.

He could see them all, could see them in his mind's eye: Mama, exhausted and half-asleep, rocking the baby. Papa, so handsome in his uniform, smoking his pipe as he stood by the fire. His twin brothers - silent Demya and precocious little Vanya - playing chess, inevitably disputing the outcome. Kisa singing.

_"Malenkaya sestra,"_ he sighed, and with that, the memory was gone.

All gone. They were all gone.

His father had been the first, a casualty of the Great Patriotic War, declared missing in action, his body, like so many others from that terrible time, never recovered. Illya's sister had died of pneumonia the following Spring, along with little Vanya and the baby. Demya lasted until the following Autumn, but at last, he too succumbed, a victim of the typhus epidemic. Then one day the NKVD took his mother away, and he was alone.

"I am sorry," he whispered to the ghosts of his old life.

_Illyusha,_ a voice sighed gently, or perhaps it was only the wind.

Tears welled in his eyes. He swiped at them with the back of his hand. "I am sorry," he said again.

He wandered about, opening cupboards and lifting debris from the fallen roof, looking for something, anything, that would stir his memory. All he found, aside from a litter of rat droppings, was a candle stub lodged in a corner of the cupboard, and an old photograph wedged under his sleeping pallet, precisely where his head would have lain. The black and white photo was of two people - a man and a woman perhaps - but years of water damage from the leaking roof had rendered the image unrecognizable. They could have been anyone.

He reached though the broken windowpane, and hefted the rusting flatiron. It flaked away in his hands. He lifted the larger of three pitchers, the one with the missing handle. The glaze was cracked from years of exposure to the sun and rain; a myriad of tiny, irregular lines were etched into its surface. Inside, vacant spider egg cases shared space with a few desiccated stems, and the dried crown of a sunflower.

_Sunflowers!_

The years rolled back without warning, forgotten memories rising to the surface of Illya's consciousness like treasures washed in on the tide:

Kisa, barefoot and utterly filthy, holding a handful of sunflowers; Mama placing them with reverence into her best pitcher, setting it on the windowsill.

Little sister singing her songs, always slightly out of tune, the words culled from her secret, magical language, nonsense syllables that only she could decipher.

Oh, how his heart ached for one of her songs!

Demya's first word, a cause for much celebration. He was three years old, watching the first snowflakes of the season fall. _Pochemu? _he had asked. Why? A miracle, Mama said, and lit a candle. Papa killed a chicken for dinner that night.

Mama, nursing the baby, kissing his chubby fingers and counting softly to ten. Papa chopping wood. Clever Vanya, teaching himself to sew from one of Mama's books. Sweet Demya nursing a baby bird that had fallen from its nest.

How could he have forgotten?

The memories flooded his consciousness one after another, rolling in on a tide of revelation. Their beauty took his breath away, even as the enormity of the loss pierced his heart: Kisa eating jam, Papa painting designs on a red horse he had carved, Mama reading to them from a small, thin book with golden letters.

He smelled Papa's tobacco.

Illya felt the pieces of his life shift around him, felt the moment when his shame fell away, and was replaced by a warm rush of love.

_"Sem'ya moi,"_ he whispered. My family.

He retrieved the stub of candle from the cupboard, and placed it on the mantle. He trimmed the wick and, using the cigarette lighter he always carried, lit the misshapen lump of wax, just as Mama would have done. It was a risk, he knew - any light increased the possibility of discovery, but it felt right, somehow, to do it. He sat beside the cold, charred hearth, keeping vigil until the candle went out, shortly before dawn.

He heard the neighbor's rooster crowing, and knew that it was time to leave. Soon the workers would file by on their way to the mines and factories; one of them was certain to notice his presence, and would alert the authorities before too long.

Illya replaced the pitcher on the window ledge; he imagined it filled with Kisa's sunflowers. He touched the disintegrating fabric of a curtain, caressed the crumbling stones of the hearth. _"Zakrojte vashi, i otdyh," _he whispered as he closed the door. "Rest now."

_We are content,_ the voices said, or perhaps it was merely the sighing of the wind.


End file.
